Introducing Hazelnut

Dear friends out in cyberspace,

As I’m writing this, I am out at the barn, with goats jumping at my back and standing on the fence. My dear husband is snapping away pics to put on this site—isn’t this so cute?? Ok, so I’m not really planning to write my blog out at the barn every week, but it sure is a good way to start off, don’t you think?

Why are the goats all around me and going a little nuts at the fence? Well, for one thing, it’s dinner time, and they are eagerly/desperately wondering what I am doing and when is the alfalfa going to get deposited in their feeder. . .

Out comes Hazelnut as our model. She was born this past April to our “best goat,” Taza (the black and white smiling goat on my website). Hazelnut had a great first day, then after a freeze that night, I went out to feed in the morning and she was splayed out on the barn floor looking completely dead. Turned out she was still very much alive, but was severely hypothermic. We brought her in the house, put her on a hot water bottle, and started rubbing her down and talking to her. It was a school morning, and although she was responding a little, I was not feeling very hopeful. As we were getting ready to rush out the door to take kids to school, we said our last good-byes to our poor little newborn kid, and she lifted her head, looked at us, and let out a big “baaaaaaah!!” Oh! I called the vet right away, took a big detour out to Pecos (the opposite direction from Santa Fe, where the kids go to school), and took her in for some emergency care. After a day on a heating pad, receiving fluids, and I’m not sure what else (well, and $200), we picked her up in the late afternoon. Her temperature still wasn’t reading on the thermometer, but she had made it through the day. I was given a syringe to feed her with, and told to keep her warm and get some colostrum (the first, highly nutritious and protective milk from Mama) into her. I knew what I had to do. I went home, sewed up a little make-shift sling, and put the little goat in, right on my chest (ok, not skin-to-skin as I did with my babies). I put a sweatshirt on over that and zipped her in. Oooo, was that cozy! Over the course of the evening, with the help of the kids, we put her up on the kitchen counter and got some milk into her. She started to perk up more and more, like a little flower. More about Hazelnut’s story next week . . .